I created a simple Macro program to help assist the disabled with...

This is a throwaway account and I'm not posting this for Karma.

I created a simple macro program to help people with a disability to perform a function in a game and posted about it on sub reddit dedicated to the game in question. This was around the time Zach Anner was on the front page. After seeing Zach's potential and good humor about his condition and having a son whom was born with a disability, I was inspired to make this program.

Now as it happened I was down voted for posting about it. My program was called a "hack" by the majority of this Sub Reddit community. Although my programs intentions were for those whom lacked the ability to perform the in game fuction, this did not seem to matter. Long story short, someone (probably from the Sub Reddit) social engineered my web host to shut down my website, which I got back a few days later. Consequently my free dot.tk domain was no longer pointing toward an active website; terms of use state a free domain has to point to an active website or it can be sold. My domain was purchased within 2 hours of my site going down, quite a coincidence? Through the domain I was seeing over 3000 unique visits a day, my site traffic has dropped to about 100 unique visits a day since my domain was taken. I was earning roughly $20 a day before this happened and had this continued I would have earned enough to help support my family.

If the person responsible is reading this I want you to know that your actions had some real consequences to people in need. This month I had to go on public assistance to keep from being evicted which could have been avoided had you not taken action against my website. I hope next time you see a mark you might think about how you might affect real people. As it happened your actions would have directly attributed to putting a family with a 2 year old child on streets had public assistance not been available.

I'm in no way saying this person(s) actions represent the whole of the Reddit community but I did want to share my story about what happened. I have no way to prove or disprove this was indeed Redditor, I'm only going off my gut feeling that it was.

As far as it being my responsibility for protecting my website and it's assets, had I the $6.95 to spend on the domain name I would have purchased it, as it was I was broke when I launched my website. I've been out of work caring for my son full time for the past 6 months. How this happened is my wife landed a job making more money then I was at the time and we swapped places caring for my son. This project was my only means of income at home. You might wonder why I can't throw my child in some daycare and go to work to help support my family. I live in a rural town with a population of 125. The nearest city with the resources to deal with a child of my sons disability is about 100 miles away. There is a preschool in my area for disabled children but my son does not qualify for it until he turns 3 years old.

How we got behind with our rent was not due to being financially irresponsible. Neither my wife nor I have any credit card debt. We both own our vehicles, we do not have cell phones, we do not have television service, we do not go out to eat, we don't spend any of our money of lavish things only on our needs. Despite the fact that we have no extra expenses, a single persons income is not enough. My wife and I both feel that being on any public assistance was to be avoided, and we did so for two years, as we don't want to contribute to the strain on welfare system.

To sum it all up, I keep seeing posts about how caring and compassionate the Reddit community can be toward injustices in all forms and I feel this is great, but among those people just as any community are people who are out to do harm. This person(s) whom targeted my website, over conflicting gaming ethics?, did not know the real world impact he would have on my family. If you read this I forgive you, my family and I will be fine, but know that in our time of struggling with raising a child with a disability, living on a single income, and trying to find means to overcome a time of poverty in our lives that you put that much more pressure on us to survive.

Thanks for taking the time read my rant.

TLDR: Published a program on a website, a Redditor? tricked my web host to take down my site, lost my domain in the process, lost profits due to loss of domain, almost evicted due to loss of income.

Our situation is improving as we've caught up on most of our bills and should be off of welfare next month. We only have to tough if it out for another 6 months before my son will be be 3 years old and I'll be able to start working part time out of the home.